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Fractures in Social Order

The explosion of radicalism and emergence of make-believe kingdoms must be seen as the superficial eruption of the simmering magma of social order and public morals.

By
YUDI LATIF
· 5 minutes read
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Police lines cordon off the premises of the so-called Keraton Agung Sejagad on Friday (17/1/2020) in Brajan village, Prambanan, Klaten, Central Java. The Central Java Police are investigating a fraud case against Totok Santosa, the self-proclaimed king of the “world empire”who had claimed “fees” from 28 followers.

The explosion of radicalism and emergence of make-believe kingdoms must be seen as the superficial eruption of the simmering magma of social order and public morals. The history of the archipelago shows that, whenever the center of power as the center of exemplary behavior fails to provide social and moral order, chaos reigns as people in the periphery long for a “ratu adil” (just leader).

For example, after the forced cultivation system led to widespread suffering, while resistance in the wars of Java and Sumatra was quelled and local aristocracies were forced to kowtow to colonial power, the people suffered without any hope for help or exemplary leadership. In this era of sorrow and despair, elegiac poems emerged from various parts of the archipelago. In Hikayat Abdullah (The Tale of Abdullah), Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munshi (1843) lamented, “The old order has been destroyed, a new world emerges, and everything around us changes.” Meanwhile, ahead of his death in 1873, the Surakarta Palace’s celebrated poem R. Ng. Ranggawarsita wrote Serat Kalatidha (Poem for the Age of Doubts). The poem’s first verse goes, “The state’s shimmer fades away in the ruins of teachings of wisdom and the absence of role models. The intellectuals are carried away by the currents of the age of doubts. Everything darkens. The world is drowned in sorrow.”

Editor:
naranasrullah
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